It's now January 20th and I haven't seen much change in my body in regards to my NPC bodybuilding show... but that could be due to one minor hiccup in my plans...
Coming down with a cold...
Actually I'm pretty sure it's a sinus/ear infection, but I have no health insurance right now so I'm not able to go to the doctor to figure out what it is. Luckily my mom is a nurse and she semi-diagnosed it as an infection...
ALSO luckily, I still had antibiotics from a surgery I had in 2012 and I was able to start a regimen of those in order to combat the infection... I waited about 10 days to see if my body would kick it naturally, it didn't. That's when you know it's probably an infection. DARN IT!
Not only are the symptoms downright ANNOYING (started with a sore throat, cough, runny nose... morphed into stuffy nose, stuffed up ears (half deaf), sinus pressure, headaches, cough), but I have had absolutely NO energy the majority of the time I've had this.
I had my first symptoms on January 9th and since then I've only worked out 4 times. I've tried to stick to my diet plan but have fallen off the bandwagon a few times due to having NO appetite or craving something other then fish and greens...
BUT, I will say that the days I did workout made me feel better for a little bit. And I did notice my body changing with just those few workouts.
The first two times I worked out when I first got this cold/infection hybrid, the symptoms weren't as severe and I had energy to get thru the workouts. They actually made me feel better. Then about 4 days into this I was sapped of all my energy and didn't workout for about 4-5 days. Finally I'd had enough of feeling like a bum and I took a decongestant that contains pseudoephedrine which is basically Sudafed (I had been avoiding any meds up until this point), and that stuff ALWAYS makes me feel like I've drank 10 cups of coffee. That gave me the energy to do a moderate circuit training workout. It felt good to get my body moving again.
The very next morning I had scheduled one of my personal training sessions so I took half of a Sudafed about an hour and a half before my session. I also drank a little bit of green tea with my breakfast. WHOA was my body ready to MOVE. It also meant my heart rate got up into the max area pretty fast. So my trainer didn't push me as hard as he normally would. I really didn't feel like I was any less strong compared to when I'm not sick, it was just a little harder to breathe and I could feel my heart pumping pretty fast.
Either way I'm glad I got those workouts in. It's all about consistency. You have to stick with it if you want to reach your goals. The hardest part for me is that my friends and family members don't understand what I'm doing. Even after I explain it to them, they still don't get it and absentmindedly offer me "bad" foods, or offer to go out drinking (which I can't do) or ask to go out to restaurants... It's hard to turn them down, I don't want to hurt anyones feelings or make them feel like I'm avoiding them. It's just that I can't be around that sort of stuff.
I have to keep repeating myself to them. Just yesterday I had to repeat that I can't drink to my friends and their response was "Oh I thought it was only for the month of March that you can't". I had to remind them that preparation for a competition can go as far out as 12 weeks from the comp day. I am about 10 weeks out right now. They didn't really understand the concept, so basically all I can say is "I can't drink". The other thing is.... I don't really want to anyways.
